Joel Junias, Nikhil Ranjan, Sanket Nayak, and Sreekanta Das
i Research Scholar, Indian Institute of Technology (ISM), Dhanbad, India, 21dr0066@cve.iitism.ac.in
ii Assistant Professor, Gati Shakti Vishwavidyalaya, Vadodara, India, nikhil.ranjan@gsv.ac.in
iii Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Technology (ISM), Dhanbad, India, sanket@iitism.ac.in
iv Professor, University of Windsor, Canada, sdas@uwindsor.ca
ABSTRACT
Most of the population in developing countries like India live in masonry houses. These structures are common because the materials are readily available and affordable. However, masonry houses located alongside roads or in hilly areas are vulnerable to natural calamities, such as rockfalls and debris flows due to landslides. While these structures perform well under gravity loads but are inadequate in withstanding lateral loads. Therefore, it is essential to mitigate these structures against lateral forces. In this study, an experimental investigation was conducted in which unreinforced and reinforced single brick walls measuring 1.5 m in length and 1.5 m in height were constructed. The coir fibre (agro waste) and nylon fibre (textile waste) were added to the mortar mix to test their effectiveness in strengthening unreinforced masonry walls (URM) against impact loading. A pendulum impact test setup was fabricated, consisting of a pendulum arm and external weight disks to introduce impact loads on the specimens. A 70 kg weight was attached to the pendulum arm, and the specimens were subjected to impact loading at the centre of the wall using a hemispherical-shaped impactor released at a 30o angle. The reinforced masonry specimens exhibited significantly better performance than the URM in terms of impact resistance, load-carrying capacity, and energy absorption. This improvement may be attributed to the increase in tensile strength of the URM due to the addition of fibres, which initiates a fibre-bridging mechanism that restricts further crack propagation. This keeps the masonry intact and prevents the impactor from penetrating the wall, enabling the reinforced structures to endure more hits than the unreinforced specimen.
KEYWORDS: Masonry, impact, pendulum, strengthening, fibre.
125-Junias.pdf
